Learning Word Meanings Research Articles

Learning Word Meanings (Part 2)

Learning Word Meanings (Part 2)

Learning Word Meanings (Part 1)

Learning Word Meanings (Part 1)

Exploring the role of hand gestures in learning novel phoneme contrasts and vocabulary in a second language.

Co-speech hand gestures are a type of multimodal input that has received relatively little attention in the context of second language learning. The present study explored the role that observing and producing different types of gestures plays in learning novel speech sounds and word meanings in an L2. Naïve English-speakers were taught two components of Japanese—novel phonemic vowel length contrasts and vocabulary items comprised of those contrasts—in one of four different gesture conditions: Syllable Observe, Syllable Produce, Mora Observe, and Mora Produce. Half of the gestures conveyed intuitive information about syllable structure, and the other half, unintuitive information about Japanese mora structure. Within each Syllable and Mora condition, half of the participants only observed the gestures that accompanied speech during training, and the other half also produced the gestures that they observed along with the speech. The main finding was that participants across all four conditions had similar outcomes in two different types of auditory identification tasks and a vocabulary test. The results suggest that hand gestures may not be well suited for learning novel phonetic distinctions at the syllable level within a word, and thus, gesture-speech integration may break down at the lowest levels of language processing and learning.

Learning Word Meanings from Teachers’ Repeated Story Read-Aloud in EFL Primary Classrooms

This study used a quasi-experimental design to determine the effects of teachers’ story read-aloud on EFL elementary school students’ word learning outcomes. It specifically examined whether the word learning was enhanced by teachers’ repeated story read-aloud and word-meaning explanations and further determined whether the learning outcomes were related to children’s English proficiency. Two native English-speaking teachers read a story to their fourth-grade classes four times. The results showed that increasing frequency of story read-aloud yielded greater word-learning gains across time. The EFL children, on average, learned approximately half of the target words by the third read-aloud. While both high- and low-proficiency groups showed significant vocabulary gains with the frequency of teachers’ read-aloud, the high-proficiency children consistently outperformed their low-proficiency peers, especially on the L1 meaning-matching vocabulary test. The overall findings were quite encouraging and showed empirical evidence that teachers’ repeated story read-aloud can be an effective way to facilitate elementary school children’s word learning in a context where English is a foreign language.

Cross-situational word learning is both implicit and strategic.

For decades, implicit learning researchers have examined a variety of cognitive tasks in which people seem to automatically extract structure from the environment. Similarly, recent statistical learning studies have shown that people can learn word-object mappings from the repeated co-occurrence of words and objects in individually ambiguous situations. In light of this, the goal of the present paper is to investigate whether adult cross-situational learners require an explicit effort to learn word-object mappings, or if it may take place incidentally, only requiring attention to the stimuli. In two implicit learning experiments with incidental tasks directing participants' attention to different aspects of the stimuli, we found evidence of learning, suggesting that cross-situational learning mechanisms can operate incidentally, without explicit effort. However, performance was superior under explicit study instructions, indicating that strategic processes also play a role. Moreover, performance under instruction to learn word meanings did not differ from performance at counting co-occurrences, which may indicate these tasks engage similar strategies.

All input isn't equal: how the nature of the learner shapes language acquisition

AbstractTo acquire a language, a child must keep track of input from the linguistic environment and infer what grammar generated it. However, not all of the information in the input is available to the child. What the child can encode from the input changes across development, as a function of what information the child can process, and what he knows and expects about the system being acquired. In this paper I present a novel word learning experiment where children generalize differently depending on whether they are learning word meanings or word classes. While the linguistic input could lead to multiple generalizations, children use it in systematically different ways depending on the problem they are trying to solve. This result reflects both content of the input and constraints on learning stemming from hypotheses the learner brings to the task.

Social and Discourse Contributions to the Determination of Reference in Cross-Situational Word Learning

How do children infer the meanings of their first words? Even in infant-directed speech, object nouns are often used in complex contexts with many possible referents and in sentences with many other words. Previous work has argued that children can learn word meanings via cross-situational observation of correlations between words and their referents. While cross-situational associations can sometimes be informative, social cues to what a speaker is talking about can provide a powerful shortcut to word meaning. The current study takes steps toward quantifying the informativeness of cues that signal speakers' chosen referent, including their eye-gaze, the position of their hands, and the referents of their previous utterances. We present results based on a hand-annotated corpus of 24 videos of child-caregiver play sessions with children from 6 to 18 months old, which we make available to researchers interested in similar issues. Our analyses suggest that although they can be more useful than cross-situational information in some contexts, social and discourse information must also be combined probabilistically to be effective in determining reference.

Actively Learning Object Names Across Ambiguous Situations

Previous research shows that people can use the co-occurrence of words and objects in ambiguous situations (i.e., containing multiple words and objects) to learn word meanings during a brief passive training period (Yu & Smith, 2007). However, learners in the world are not completely passive but can affect how their environment is structured by moving their heads, eyes, and even objects. These actions can indicate attention to a language teacher, who may then be more likely to name the attended objects. Using a novel active learning paradigm in which learners choose which four objects they would like to see named on each successive trial, this study asks whether active learning is superior to passive learning in a cross-situational word learning context. Finding that learners perform better in active learning, we investigate the strategies and discover that most learners use immediate repetition to disambiguate pairings. Unexpectedly, we find that learners who repeat only one pair per trial--an easy way to infer this pair-perform worse than those who repeat multiple pairs per trial. Using a working memory extension to an associative model of word learning with uncertainty and familiarity biases, we investigate individual differences that correlate with these assorted strategies.

Learning word meanings during reading: Effects of phonological and semantic cues on children with language impairment

Phonological and semantic deficits in spoken word learning have been documented in children with language impairment (LI), and cues that address these deficits have been shown to improve their word learning performance. However, the effects of such cues on word learning during reading remain largely unexplored. This study investigated whether (a) control, (b) phonological, (c) semantic, and (d) combined phonological-semantic conditions affected semantic word learning during reading in 9- to 11-year-old children with LI (n = 12) and with typical language (TL, n = 11) from low-income backgrounds. Children were exposed to 20 novel words across these four conditions prior to reading passages containing the novel words. After reading, a dynamic semantic assessment was given, which included oral definitions, contextual clues, and multiple choices. Results indicated that the LI group performed more poorly than the TL group in phonological and combined conditions, but not in the control or semantic conditions. Also, a similar trend for both groups was suggested, with improved performance in the semantic and combined conditions relative to the control and phonological conditions. Clinical implications include a continued need for explicit instruction in semantic properties of novel words to facilitate semantic word learning during reading in children with LI.

Interactive language learning by robots: the transition from babbling to word forms.

The advent of humanoid robots has enabled a new approach to investigating the acquisition of language, and we report on the development of robots able to acquire rudimentary linguistic skills. Our work focuses on early stages analogous to some characteristics of a human child of about 6 to 14 months, the transition from babbling to first word forms. We investigate one mechanism among many that may contribute to this process, a key factor being the sensitivity of learners to the statistical distribution of linguistic elements. As well as being necessary for learning word meanings, the acquisition of anchor word forms facilitates the segmentation of an acoustic stream through other mechanisms. In our experiments some salient one-syllable word forms are learnt by a humanoid robot in real-time interactions with naive participants. Words emerge from random syllabic babble through a learning process based on a dialogue between the robot and the human participant, whose speech is perceived by the robot as a stream of phonemes. Numerous ways of representing the speech as syllabic segments are possible. Furthermore, the pronunciation of many words in spontaneous speech is variable. However, in line with research elsewhere, we observe that salient content words are more likely than function words to have consistent canonical representations; thus their relative frequency increases, as does their influence on the learner. Variable pronunciation may contribute to early word form acquisition. The importance of contingent interaction in real-time between teacher and learner is reflected by a reinforcement process, with variable success. The examination of individual cases may be more informative than group results. Nevertheless, word forms are usually produced by the robot after a few minutes of dialogue, employing a simple, real-time, frequency dependent mechanism. This work shows the potential of human-robot interaction systems in studies of the dynamics of early language acquisition.

The relationship between task-induced involvement load and learning new words from context

AbstractThis study investigatedthe relationship between task-inducedinvolvementloadand ESL learners’ inferencing and learning word meanings from context.Thirty-two ESL learners were randomly assigned to one of three groups, witheach group receiving a different version of a text that was assumed to differfrom one another in terms of the degree of involvement load. The learners hadto read each text and infer the meanings of 10 unknown target words. Think-aloud protocols were used to gather information about learners’ use of lexi-cal inferencing strategies. A vocabulary knowledge test was used prior to thestudy to measure learners’ initial knowledge of the target words, and then oneweek after the study to measure the degree of retention of the words correctlyinferred. The results showed a significant relationship between the degree oftask-induced involvement load, learners’ use of lexical inferencing strategies,and subsequent retention of successfully inferred words. 1. Introduction 1 The degree of learner involvement in a task has been suggested as a significantfactor in successful L2 vocabulary learning. Researchers have emphasized thatlearners need to be involved in processing new words both qualitatively andquantitativelyif they want to learn those words successfully (Fraser 1999; Hul-stijn and Laufer 2001; Laufer and Hulstijn 2001; Rott 2005, 2007; Rott andWilliams 2003). Hulstijn and Laufer, for example, pointed out:

Middle School Students Need More Opportunities to Read Across the Curriculum

Independent reading in the content areas is essential for advancing students’ literacy growth through the grades. Middle school students, in particular, profit from opportunities to engage in actual reading and, simultaneously, to be supported from an appropriate structure. Specifically, they need substantial time to read, frequent immersion in a variety of texts, easy access to balanced classroom libraries to support in-school and at-home reading, active participation in drama-based activities, and interesting contexts for learning word meanings. These and other sources of support increase the effectiveness of independent reading across the curriculum by helping middle school students not only improve their reading, but also enjoy reading as a lifetime activity.

Learning word meanings during reading by children with language learning disability and typically-developing peers

This study investigated whether children with language learning disability (LLD) differed from typically-developing peers in their ability to learn meanings of novel words presented during reading. Fifteen 9–11-year-old children with LLD and 15 typically-developing peers read four passages containing 20 nonsense words. Word learning was assessed through oral definition and multiple-choice tasks. Variables were position of informative context, number of exposures, part of speech, and contextual clues. The LLD group scored lower than same-aged peers on oral definition (p < .001) and multiple-choice (p < .001) tasks. For both groups, there was no effect for position of informative context (p = .867) or number of exposures (p = .223). All children benefitted from contextual clues. The findings suggested difficulty inferring and recalling word meanings during reading and pointed to the need for vocabulary intervention in the upper elementary years for children with LLD.

Toward a theory of semantic representation

AbstractWe present an account of semantic representation that focuses on distinct types of information from which word meanings can be learned. In particular, we argue that there are at least two major types of information from which we learn word meanings. The first is what we call experiential information. This is data derived both from our sensory-motor interactions with the outside world, as well as from our experience of own inner states, particularly our emotions. The second type of information is language-based. In particular, it is derived from the general linguistic context in which words appear. The paper spells out this proposal, summarizes research supporting this view and presents new predictions emerging from this framework.

Sensitivity to sampling in Bayesian word learning

We report a new study testing our proposal that word learning may be best explained as an approximate form of Bayesian inference (Xu & Tenenbaum, in press). Children are capable of learning word meanings across a wide range of communicative contexts. In different contexts, learners may encounter different sampling processes generating the examples of word-object pairings they observe. An ideal Bayesian word learner could take into account these differences in the sampling process and adjust his/her inferences about word meaning accordingly. We tested how children and adults learned words for novel object kinds in two sampling contexts, in which the objects to be labeled were sampled either by a knowledgeable teacher or by the learners themselves. Both adults and children generalized more conservatively in the former context; that is, they restricted the label to just those objects most similar to the labeled examples when the exemplars were chosen by a knowledgeable teacher, but not when chosen by the learners themselves. We discuss how this result follows naturally from a Bayesian analysis, but not from other statistical approaches such as associative word-learning models.

Developmental Word Grounding Through a Growing Neural Network With a Humanoid Robot

This paper presents an unsupervised approach of integrating speech and visual information without using any prepared data. The approach enables a humanoid robot, Incremental Knowledge Robot 1 (IKR1), to learn word meanings. The approach is different from most existing approaches in that the robot learns online from audio-visual input, rather than from stationary data provided in advance. In addition, the robot is capable of learning incrementally, which is considered to be indispensable to lifelong learning. A noise-robust self-organized growing neural network is developed to represent the topological structure of unsupervised online data. We are also developing an active-learning mechanism, called "desire for knowledge," to let the robot select the object for which it possesses the least information for subsequent learning. Experimental results show that the approach raises the efficiency of the learning process. Based on audio and visual data, they construct a mental model for the robot, which forms a basis for constructing IKRI's inner world and builds a bridge connecting the learned concepts with current and past scenes.

The world of competitive Scrabble: Novice and expert differences in visuopatial and verbal abilities.

Competitive Scrabble players spend a mean of 4.5 hr a week memorizing words from the official Scrabble dictionary. When asked if they learn word meanings when studying word lists, only 6.4% replied "always," with the rest split between "sometimes" and "rarely or never." Number of years of play correlated positively with expertise ratings, suggesting that expertise develops with practice. To determine the effect of hours of practice (M = 1,904), the authors compared experts with high-achieving college students on a battery of cognitive tests. Despite reporting that they usually memorize word lists without learning meanings, experts defined more words correctly. Reaction times on a lexical decision task (controlling for age) correlated with expertise ratings, suggesting that experts develop faster access to word identification. Experts' superiority on visuospatial processing was found for reaction time on 1 of 3 visuospatial tests. In a study of memory for altered Scrabble boards, experts outperformed novices, with differences between high and low expertise on memory for boards with structure-deforming transformations. Expert Scrabble players showed superior performance on selected verbal and visuospatial tasks that correspond to abilities that are implicated in competitive play.

An effective method for building meaning vocabulary in primary grades.

Teaching vocabulary to primary grade children is essential. Previous studies of teaching vocabulary (word meanings) using story books in the primary grades reported gains of 20%-25% of word meanings taught. The present studies concern possible influences on word meaning acquisition during instruction (Study 1) and increasing the percentage and number of word meanings acquired (Study 2). Both studies were conducted in a working-class school with approximately 50% English-language learners. The regular classroom teachers worked with their whole classes in these studies. In Study 1, average gains of 12% of word meanings were obtained using repeated reading. Adding word explanations added a 10% gain for a total gain of 22%. Pretesting had no effect on gains. In Study 2, results showed learning of 41% of word meanings taught. At this rate of learning word meanings taught, it would be possible for children to learn 400 word meanings a year if 1,000 word meanings were taught. The feasibility of teaching vocabulary to primary grade children is discussed.

Lexical neighborhoods and the word-form representations of 14-month-olds.

The degree to which infants represent phonetic detail in words has been a source of controversy in phonology and developmental psychology. One prominent hypothesis holds that infants store words in a vague or inaccurate form until the learning of similar-sounding neighbors forces attention to subtle phonetic distinctions. In the experiment reported here, we used a visual fixation task to assess word recognition. We present the first evidence indicating that, infact, the lexical representations of 14- and 15-month-olds are encoded in fine detail, even when this detail is not functionally necessary for distinguishing similar words in the infant's vocabulary. Exposure to words is sufficient for well-specified lexical representations, even well before the vocabulary spurt. These results suggest developmental continuity in infants' representations of speech: As infants begin to build a vocabulary and learn word meanings, they use the perceptual abilities previously demonstrated in tasks testing the discrimination and categorization of meaningless syllables.

Word meaning, cognitive development, and social interaction

This review proposes that Bloom's linkage of word meaning with more general cognitive capacities could be extended through examination of the social contexts in which children learn. Specifically, the child's developing theory of mind can be viewed as part of the process by which children learn word meanings through engagement in social interactions that facilitate both language and strategic behaviours.